xcv:Ambivalence: FirstNationalBastard: MaudlinMutantMollusk: FirstNationalBastard: See what happens when people start watching British dramas?

I blame Monty Python

Does British comedy transfer to the states as well as the drama does?

Sure, there's stuff like Python that's pretty much universal, but do other British comedies make it across as well? I mean, even The Office had to be Americanized.

/then dragged out for about 6 years too long, as is the American way.

It depends. Geeks like british comedy. Just look at IT Crowd, Doctor Who (it's funny), spacers.

Why haven't we gotten a remake of Doctor Who yet? Could connect to a whole new audience with Shia LaBeouf as the Doctor, Rihanna as a spunky, sorta-goth chick as his new companion and the wise-cracking TARDIS embodied by a holographic Dane Cook. Bonus cameo by Jack Black as every single Dalek.

Valiente:When British linguists want to take a better guess at how the Great Vowel Shift played out, they go to little barrier islands off the Mid-Atlantic states, or climb into the Appalachian hills. Suddenly, recitations of Shakespeare rhyme better.

Thanks (or not) to my upbringing, I've been told that I sport an accent that my fellow mid-westerners have described as "an unholy mix of Chicago and northeast" (yes, I'm aware that there are several northeastern accents, but usually the people commenting on my accent seem not to be) and I spent a few months living in the UK. One of the funnier things I heard was their attempts at my accent after a few drinks, and I'm pretty sure one of funnier things they heard was my attempt at theirs after the same amount of drinks, as while I'm fairly good at recognizing accents, I suck at imitating them, especially since most Brits can drink me under the table and on a few occasions, tried to.

Valiente:Why haven't we gotten a remake of Doctor Who yet? Could connect to a whole new audience with Shia LaBeouf as the Doctor, Rihanna as a spunky, sorta-goth chick as his new companion and the wise-cracking TARDIS embodied by a holographic Dane Cook. Bonus cameo by Jack Black as every single Dalek.

Masterful trolling, dude.

Definitely well done because I can absolutely see someone hating the viewing public enough to make The Beef The Doctor. Rihanna wouldn't be a ridiculous stretch considering Martha as the prototype.

The other two, I pray, are too far beyond the imagination of the most sadistic television exec to consider. Hopefully...

My 12 year old has been calling it "the loo" for 3 or 4 years. She thinks it is funny. The part that is funny is seeing the looks on peoples faces when a kid walks in, in the middle of Kansas and asks to use the loo.

hubiestubert:Valiente: When British linguists want to take a better guess at how the Great Vowel Shift played out, they go to little barrier islands off the Mid-Atlantic states, or climb into the Appalachian hills. Suddenly, recitations of Shakespeare rhyme better.

It's fascinating to hear and the case that "this is London English 400 years ago" is trechantly argued.

That was a great piece.

I had a feeling you'd enjoy it, and I didn't even have to write my post in IPA.

I had an English teacher in high school who was either the son of Danish immigrants to Canada or came here as a kid (maybe a WWII refugee thing). Because he spoke Danish, he had a leg up on Anglo-Saxon, and eventually mastered Middle English.

So we had recitations of Chaucer "as he was spake". Great stuff, if hard, at first, to follow. That naturally introduced Caxton's spelling innovations, the Great Vowel Shift and the concept of wandering rhotacisms and how the American accent of the northern Atlantic states is still similar to parts of East Anglia today. My favourite Fuddite is Lucy Worsley, a jolly hockey sticks sort of historian on the BBC with the least flattering haircut on Earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Worsley

I was lucky to go to high school when there were still teachers unafraid to bring university-level subject matter to the classroom, and there was still enough money in the system to allow such intellectual roaming.

brigid_fitch:Ikam: FTFA "Yagoda notices changes in pronunciation too - for example his students sometimes use "that sort of London glottal stop", dropping the T in words like "important" or "Manhattan".

The glottal stop is not just confined to UK dialects, plenty of American dialects have it as well.

Like people actually IN or even from the Manhattan area. I'm from Jersey City and, although I've (thankfully) lost 99% of that accent, I don't pronounce the t's in Manhattan or the 1st t in important. Nobody in my area does. You don't start to hear it until you get down by the Philly area.

I'm from Connecticut and I don't know anyone from this part of the state who pronounces the t's in 'Manhattan', though most people seem to pronounce 'important' with a very soft t at the end. Parts of CT lean towards what I call the Massachusetts pronunciation, while others are very influenced by NYC.

xcv:Ambivalence: FirstNationalBastard: MaudlinMutantMollusk: FirstNationalBastard: See what happens when people start watching British dramas?

I blame Monty Python

Does British comedy transfer to the states as well as the drama does?

Sure, there's stuff like Python that's pretty much universal, but do other British comedies make it across as well? I mean, even The Office had to be Americanized.

/then dragged out for about 6 years too long, as is the American way.

It depends. Geeks like british comedy. Just look at IT Crowd, Doctor Who (it's funny), spacers.

Why haven't we gotten a remake of Doctor Who yet? Could connect to a whole new audience with Shia LaBeouf as the Doctor, Rihanna as a spunky, sorta-goth chick as his new companion and the wise-cracking TARDIS embodied by a holographic Dane Cook. Bonus cameo by Jack Black as every single Dalek.

Blasphemy!! Especially considering Doctor Who is still running, and doing smashingly well.

Valiente:hubiestubert: Valiente: When British linguists want to take a better guess at how the Great Vowel Shift played out, they go to little barrier islands off the Mid-Atlantic states, or climb into the Appalachian hills. Suddenly, recitations of Shakespeare rhyme better.

It's fascinating to hear and the case that "this is London English 400 years ago" is trechantly argued.

That was a great piece.

I had a feeling you'd enjoy it, and I didn't even have to write my post in IPA.

I had an English teacher in high school who was either the son of Danish immigrants to Canada or came here as a kid (maybe a WWII refugee thing). Because he spoke Danish, he had a leg up on Anglo-Saxon, and eventually mastered Middle English.

So we had recitations of Chaucer "as he was spake". Great stuff, if hard, at first, to follow. That naturally introduced Caxton's spelling innovations, the Great Vowel Shift and the concept of wandering rhotacisms and how the American accent of the northern Atlantic states is still similar to parts of East Anglia today. My favourite Fuddite is Lucy Worsley, a jolly hockey sticks sort of historian on the BBC with the least flattering haircut on Earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Worsley

I was lucky to go to high school when there were still teachers unafraid to bring university-level subject matter to the classroom, and there was still enough money in the system to allow such intellectual roaming.

I was lucky enough to have two great professors at UMF. Karl Franson was a brilliant Shakespeare scholar, and while he was perhaps the most buttoned down Ivy League educated, prep school accented wee man clad in Kelly Green possible, he loved the language, not just of Shakespeare, but Bunyon as well. He taught these works as living pieces, still. Clad perhaps in armor of a language that had shifted beneath them, but reaching out from that past into today, with power and majesty. A tiny wee man, barely 5'4" and spritely in his Boston Brahmin accented ways, he instilled a love of that language. Jay Hoar, who is sadly no longer with us, was the only member of the UMF faculty to have a building named for him while he was still alive. He had an amazing career as a linguist. Jay could place folks within 50 miles of where they were born, or at least lived during their childhood. An amazing ear for accent and dialect, he made it a regular exercise to speak to folks and infer where they'd come from within minutes, by their choice of words, their accent, and he was startlingly precise. He also loved English as a living language, in all its eccentricity and oddness. His "Ain't is a Beautiful Word" was a lesson he did every year, and it was one of those classes that you'd ask to sit in on, again and again, because it was an eloquent and bold and unabashedly fond look at how English is used. Not enshrined and venerable, but working, breathing, always in motion. Use creates accents and dialects. They form, and those bonds help form communities, identities, bridges gulfs between people. What occurs when cultures meet, and how those traditions are preserved, that is the story of English as a language. America, for its vast melting pot, created very much Americanisms, that spread across the globe, and many more were preserved and still used today in pockets, a testament to the inventiveness and flexibility and sheer exuberance with the tongue. These two men helped form a love of the language, in all its boisterous and sometimes reckless abandon. For both, the language's joy wasn't in keeping it pristine and ensconced in some dry bin, but in its use. Its growth. Knowing how Old English became Middle English to Modern English was a journey, not just of words and accent, but of the sweep of history, how a people grew and changed, and their language did the same thing. The literature is a snapshot not just of the language of the time, but of its people and their journeys.

The vocabulary is probably becoming more similar, but I've read that the actual accents continue to diverge. A type of British accent that an American has never heard before can be very difficult to understand, and I'd guess it would work the other way around too, if it wasn't for the fact that Brits have been so exposed to various American accents from movies.

Need_MindBleach:The vocabulary is probably becoming more similar, but I've read that the actual accents continue to diverge. A type of British accent that an American has never heard before can be very difficult to understand, and I'd guess it would work the other way around too, if it wasn't for the fact that Brits have been so exposed to various American accents from movies.

I discovered a bunch of British podcasts done by comedians. When I first starting listening to them I couldn't understand quite a bit. It didn't take long to pick it up though and listening to them became a regular thing at my dull job. I hardly ever watch TV but I do like British comedy, as most dorks here do. And in my WoW guild there are a substantial number of British and Australian members, rarely do we do a raid without at least two foreign accents coming over the VOIP we use.

So I guess I'm really exposed to it. Is it any wonder some of that doesn't creep into my own language? Funny thing is I'll be in conversation (see right there?) with a friend and unconsciously throw in a British way of saying things or slang and later I see hear them use it as well. Overall, I'm okay with that. I think it's really cool that us English-speaking countries are, in some ways, closer on a personal level than we ever have.

Need_MindBleach:Smoky Dragon Dish: Yagoda notices changes in pronunciation too - for example his students sometimes use "that sort of London glottal stop", dropping the T in words like "important" or "Manhattan".

This is nothing new for those of use from New York/New Jersey.

I'm pretty sure this is nothing new to 90% of American dialects, and the author didn't exactly consult a linguist on this one.